Hump Day Kick Start – Sniper Edition

Hump Day Kick Start – for your muse, a writing picture prompt, or just a visual treat.

Some days…

Tell me about today’s prompt. Who is he and who or what is in his sights? Is he s hired gun, deadly mercenary, or amateur sniper? Is his target a mob boss? Collateral damage? A dignitary? A scientist with the cure to cancer? Is there a war on his country’s soil? Does he have a conscious? Or could he be fueled by duty or vengeance? What if he is from the future and his assignment is to take out the person who destroys humanity in fifty years? Ooh, instead what if his target was the destroyer’s mother? Take her out and the villain would never be born. What if that same woman was his mother, too?

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6 Responses to Hump Day Kick Start – Sniper Edition

Ah, I thought. A man with a gun is a man with a mission, a purpose and the guts to carry it out. So I followed him around for 24 hours, courtesy of my online newspaper’s editor’s choice and $7500 just to keep me out of real trouble. I didn’t need it, I insisted. This would be a journalist’s dream assignment. But when the killing started, this dream assignment morphed into a hellish nightmare where even children were expendable. At first I thought this guy was rational. Then I thought okay, maybe not completely rational, but trained to do his duty no mater what. You had to kind of respect that intensive training in the face of horrific duty. After the men went down, the women dropped next. All that was left were the children and I watched him drop those picking off three at a time like a gunner at a carnival aiming at the ducks lined up in the line of fire. I finally managed to find my voice.
“What are you doing?” I screamed as he grinned maniacally ignoring the question. “Those babies have nothing to do with anything at all! Their only crime is that they’re alive! Are you crazy?”
All I got in return was an evil, sardonic grin. “They’re all the enemy bitch. You got to cut em down before what they’ve learned to do what their parents taught them.”
Maybe it was me who was maniacal. But I wasn’t aiming a gun at children. I was aiming a gun at him. Again, my editor had insisted that I carry one, just in case. I figured it was now “in case”. I was no sniper by any means but I couldn’t let those kids drop like flies by someone who liked doing more than his duty required. I thought maybe I could drop him in the same manner and took aim at his brows. He’d just started to laugh when the bullet entered in the exact right place of his brain. I got off another shot just to make sure.
“What the hell were you thinking sending me on that idiotic assignment?” I stomped into his office. “Not only was it terrifying it was sickening as hell! What? You think that was funny?” I stared at his callousness.
“No,” he said. “I knew if anybody could stop that bastard, you could. That’s why you’re my best correspondent. And, that’s why I love you. Now, give me that gun.” He held out his hand, palm up.
“Go to hell.” I said, still pissed to the max. “It’s mine now. And it’s going to a long time before you show your love to me, asshole.”
“Okay,” he said resuming laughing.”You still made your deadline.”

Okay, this one is easy — because (during commercials in last night’s Game Seven) I saw parts of The Professional.
– – –
Reno to Mathilde:
“see that guy in the building down the block?”
M: Not without your scope.
R: Never mind, I can see him.
M: What about him?
R: He has to be taken down.
M: Any particular reason? or just practice?
R: He stole something important to me.
M: Not that nasty knit cap you wear…
R: No, even more important.
M: Not those high-water pants…
R: Focus, Mathilde.
M: I give up. What did he steal that’s so significant that you’ about to nail him from a block away?
R: He stole my glass of milk.